


strawberries and cigarettes

by icyvanity



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Chance Meetings, First Meetings, Getting Together, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Character Death, On the Run, Torture, butcher!Neil (kinda), grand theft auto (the act not the game), less exy, narrative is p much a commentary on neil's mental state, time is fucked up in this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-04 00:29:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14008164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icyvanity/pseuds/icyvanity
Summary: Nathaniel Wesninski grew up in Baltimore with his parents and their inner circle, his every move watched by guards and officers and superiors. He was sure each day would be his last, but they all gave way to yet another circle of hell and he was drowning in the stagnation of his life as one painful nightmare bled into the next with every sunrise.One night there was something different—something bright and unknown, and Nathaniel was too battered and tired to keep himself away.





	strawberries and cigarettes

**Author's Note:**

> title is from "strawberries and cigarettes" by troye sivan

Nathaniel Wesninski grew up in Baltimore with his parents and their inner circle, his every move watched by guards and officers and superiors. He was sure each day would be his last, but they all gave way to yet another circle of hell and he was drowning in the stagnation of his life as one painful nightmare bled into the next with every sunrise.

One night there was something different—something bright and unknown, and Nathaniel was too battered and tired to keep himself away.

Nathaniel’s room faced the expansive yard behind the Wesninski mansion, and although it was dark enough that he could only see his own face reflected back at him, he still stared out, just looking for _something_. He’d long since stopped hoping for someone to come save him; he simply wasn’t worth the effort.

One of the motion sensor lights by the garage flashed on, snagging his frayed attention. But, instead of familiar shadows making their way around the garage—a grinning Lola, Romero dragging a body behind him, the trajectory of an axe splayed out across the siding—nothing came. Eventually, the light went off, but Nathaniel was the suspicious type by blood and breeding.

He was alone for the night, the whole circle gone to a charity gala in New York, but he knew one misstep could guarantee his end. He eased his aching body off the windowsill in his room, slipped out the door, and stole down the stairs, making sure to avoid the creaky one that had always gotten him caught as an insolent, ignorant child. He listened for voices at the empty kitchen doorway out of habit, before venturing through it and out the back door. Nathaniel paused and listened, and his suspicions proved correct as he heard the scrape of a shoe through gravel at the edge of the yard.

Nathaniel was almost as silent as the night as he approached the dark figure in the shadows behind the garage, careful to avoid the spots he knew would trigger the motion sensors. As soon as he realized that the boy standing there wasn’t much older than him, he knew he had noticed Nathaniel despite his efforts. They stood there quietly for a moment, with the boy steadfastly ignoring Nathaniel and oblivious to Nathaniel’s struggle to find words.

“If anyone catches you out here, you’ll be in for it,” Nathaniel said finally, unsurprised as the boy continued to disregard him as he searched for something in his jacket pockets. The alley-light overhead illuminated a flash of pale wrist against dark leather as he extracted a pack of cigarettes from an inside pocket.

He finally acknowledged Nathaniel with a flick of his eyes as he thumbed the pack open. “You got a light?” he asked quietly, lips barely visible beyond the stripe of light that turned his features sharp as glass; when Nathaniel blinked, they weren’t made dull but his face hid the slumbering violence well.

Nathaniel stared at him for a moment. It wasn’t as though his family’s neighbors were completely unaware that _something_ was happening inside the house; Nathan was careful to keep his illicit businesses disconnected from the accounts under his own name, but the feds were always searching. Nathaniel hoped that they would be able to pin something on his father—even if it was for the smallest of his crimes—but he knew such thoughts were futile. Nathaniel repeated, “If anyone—”

“You caught me out here,” the boy said, raising a brow, “and all you’ve managed to do so far is irritate me. I won’t apologize for my lack of fear, so I advise you stop expecting it.”

Nathaniel spluttered. “I said _one_ sentence.”

The other boy just stared at him; he shook his head and focused on the cigarette in his hand once more. A lighter had appeared seemingly out of nowhere, and the flame stuttered a few times in the windy Baltimore alley before lasting long enough to light it. He glanced up at Nathaniel again as he put it to his lips.

“What?” Nathaniel asked, “The threat of torture isn’t good enough for you? You want to die of lung cancer at the grand old age of, what, 18?”

The boy took a step forward and blew the smoke from his first drag into Nathaniel’s face; Nathaniel gagged and coughed, tripping backwards over his own feet in an attempt to get away and out of the pocket of smoke, but the boy grabbed the front of his shirt to stop him.

“17, actually.”

He hung suspended there for a moment as he caught his breath, before he regained his footing and shoved the boy away—or tried to at least. The boy’s hand was warm against the scars of Nathaniel’s wrist. His fingers grazed a particularly raised and recent mark from Lola, and Nathaniel’s chest constricted at the thought of the punishment he would face at her hands if she caught him out here. The boy dropped his hand, but Nathaniel stared at his own raised arm for too long before he realized how silent it had become; Nathaniel looked up and his chest clenched from something akin to fear this time as he placed the dark look in the boy’s eyes—bottomless rage.

The darkness was gone as soon as Nathaniel named it, and the boy took another pull from his cigarette. This time he blew the smoke up to the stars, head tilted up, half in shadow and half reflecting the garage light. In retrospect, it could have been a distraction to give him time to collect himself. Nathaniel barely interacted with anyone besides his father’s circle, let alone anyone his own age, and he found himself fascinated by the contrast between the boy and himself—Nathaniel was a cacophony of emotions an inch from death, while this boy had such a living steadiness about him that Nathaniel couldn’t look away.

“Those ouchies don’t feel self-inflicted,” the boy said finally, with a knowing glance down, “though they’re in such a stereotypical place.”

Nathaniel tugged at his sleeves, willing for them to remove the memory of his scars from the boy’s mind, though he knew it was futile. He wouldn’t notice until later that the boy’s comment spoke something about his own experiences, but dull panic clouded his judgement in the moment.

“What are you trying to say, exactly?” Nathaniel asked, choking on the edge in his voice that reminded him of his father; it was the Butcher’s voice, calm but harsh, evil yet controlled.

The boy took a final lengthy drag from his cigarette before dropping it to the ground. Nathaniel watched the embers disappear beneath the boy’s heavy boot. The boy was watching him again when he glanced up. Nathaniel expected questions like _Who did that to you?_ or _Can I help you?_ or even _What did you do to deserve that?_ so the boy’s choice of words surprised him.

“Someone fucked with that light. You might want to fix it before someone notices.”

“ _What?_ ” Nathaniel asked.

The boy huffed out a sigh. He pointed up at the wall of the garage, and Nathaniel realized that the motion sensor light he had seen from his window hadn’t come on at all in the time they had been standing there. If he looked closely, he could see frayed wires hanging from it.

“Did you—” Nathaniel began, only to realize he was alone. The boy was nowhere to be seen, disappeared into the night and the only evidence he had been there at all was the crushed cigarette at Nathaniel’s feet.

* * *

Nathaniel didn’t replace the light, a fact which kept him up for two nights straight after his encounter with the mysterious boy and would have kept him up longer had his bone-deep exhaustion not seeped into his performance; Nathan beat him so hard that Nathaniel was shocked he didn’t have a concussion when he came to in the cellar hours later. His days regained their monotony after that and passed by in a haze until he couldn’t remember how long ago the boy had broken the motion sensor. Sometimes Nathaniel passed the stain from the cigarette if he took the long way from the garage into the house. Sometimes he thought he’d imagined the boy altogether, and attributed the burned cement to a variety of other phenomena. Nathaniel couldn’t decide which was worse.

A few weeks later, when Nathaniel was barely holding on to his sanity let alone this impossible dreamed-up boy, he made the bold decision to make the trip out behind the garage in the dead of night again. The breath was punched out of him when he beheld the boy standing there, a lit cigarette already in his hand and a blank look in his eyes until Nathaniel stepped into his field of vision.

He went rigid as his eyes traced the warzone of Nathaniel’s body—fresh cuts from Lola’s knives, bruising covering almost half of his face and smaller patches smattered down his arms and out of sight under his clothes. The boy opened his mouth as if to say something, but no words made their way out. Eventually, he pressed the cigarette to his lips with a hand so steady and solid that Nathaniel was convinced he’d imagined something again.

“I thought you were a dream,” Nathaniel blurted out at the same moment the boy found his words: “Why do you stay?”

Both seemed surprised by the other’s choice of words, and Nathaniel was sick at the fact he had even spoken at all—dealing with his own fucked up mind was one thing, but letting someone else know about his self-doubt was inexcusable. Andrew didn’t carry emotion and expression in the way that other people did, but Nathaniel doubted he did either. He was too often surrounded by his father’s tangible anger and Lola’s manic laughter, and the quiet expressiveness of Andrew’s face was a nice change of pace—a darkening in the eyes, a quirk of the lips, brows drawing down for barely a blink.

“You’re the dream, you fucking peach,” the boy said, gesturing to Nathaniel’s mottled skin with a stab of his cigarette. “Why the fuck do you stay if someone in there is doing that to you?”

Nathaniel glanced down at himself, categorizing each bruise and every wound. He’d had worse. He was used to it. They would find him. He told the boy all of this and then some, and let the cigarette smoke and silence wash over him until the boy found his words. How his face remained so impassive while he spit out sentences like they’d personally offended him, Nathaniel didn’t yet know but something about it made him want to; this unfamiliar wanting almost knocked him off his feet, but his ears remained functioning well enough to hear.

“You’re not supposed to let people walk all over you with no reason,” the boy said, lips curving into a snarl that didn’t quite reach his eyes. The boy motioned down to the bandaids scattered across his own bare arms, the scar cutting through his eyebrow. “I’ve left every time.”

“What do you mean every time?”

“Everything about you screams falsehood. Why would I give you any truths? You wouldn’t know the first thing to do with the truth.”

Nathaniel feared the boy would turn and leave and never come back, choosing to leave before any trust between them could be built, let alone broken. He wracked his brain for an acceptable answer and said the words before the boy could even move, speaking over the pounding of his heart at the promise it entailed.

“Truth for a truth.”

The boy looked at Nathaniel and Nathaniel looked back. Something he saw in Nathaniel’s eyes must have been good enough for him to sigh and look back up at the muted Baltimore sky; Nathaniel had never learned the constellations, and the smog from the city was thick enough to choke the celestial lights down to the bare minimum. But whatever the boy saw up there seemed to give him the will to speak.

“Foster care. I’ve run away from seven homes. They keep catching up to me, but I think they might finally be tired of looking,” the boy said, blinking down to stare at the ground instead. He was more tense now, and Nathaniel knew something had caused him to leave rather than general dissatisfaction, but that truth seemed too large and looming for the start of this fragile game. He sorted through truths of his own—which the boy had correctly guessed were almost foreign concepts to him—and picked the one that was practically common knowledge.

“Have you ever heard of Nathan Wesninski?”

That got the boy’s attention. “The Butcher of Baltimore?” he scoffed out.

Nathaniel’s eyes drifted back to the dark house. It was strange that the lights weren’t on, but Nathaniel swore he could hear faint screams coming from somewhere within the mansion. He could’ve been imagining things again, but he knew without looking that the boy was still standing in front of him, breathing and _real_.

“All stories are built off of truth,” Nathaniel said quietly, seeing his father’s cleaver flash behind his eyelids. He hadn’t even noticed his eyes fall closed, but when he opened them the boy was closer than before, studying his face with an intensity Nathaniel didn’t recognize. “I’ve heard he has a disappointment for a son.”

“I hadn’t even heard he had a son,” the boy said, and continued, “but, disappointment doesn’t warrant a beating.”

“He has to be kept in line somehow. He has to learn his place.”

It was strange to speak about himself in the third person, but it offered him a sense of detachment that he clung to. Nathan would kill him if he knew Nathaniel was giving away even this semblance of information about his circle, but Nathaniel felt as though he was looking in at his life from the outside—something which he had perfected to deal with the horror of his own existence. The boy’s steady presence in front of him gave him the clarity he needed to let more imprecise statements fall from his lips. It was minutes of shaky, aborted confessions before the boy’s face settled again, the anger melting away as he appraised Nathaniel.

“You’re the goddamn pipedream.”

Nathaniel chuckled, a humorless thing, and replied, “I wish. Sometimes I don’t know what I am.”

“You’re still alive, somehow,” the boy said.

“My sense of self-preservation used to be stronger.”

The boy hummed and blew out a breath of smoke over Nathaniel’s swollen face. It reminded him of their first meeting, of how he choked on the taste; now he leaned into it, finding a calm he’d never had before in the sharp tang of nicotine. Mary used to smoke, and the scent left him a little nostalgic for the days before she hated him as Nathan did, before the smell became a warning to _run, go, don’t look back_ before she could reach him and bring him before his father. He had no warning signs now.

“It’s your turn,” he said, rather than giving out more of himself than he could handle. Nathaniel already felt raw at the boldness of his own confessions, and he knew he would lose sleep over this as well; this game was as addictive as the nicotine, and he was surprised he even had it in him to stop.

“What would you take?”

“What would you give me?”

The boy shot him a cool look for answering with a question of his own. Nathaniel turned away to give him a moment to think it over, and they faced the alley side by side for a moment. Nathaniel didn’t understand why it felt so exhilarating and terrifying to be known.

“Andrew,” the boy said.

“Andrew,” Nathaniel repeated, tasting the word, the name, the truth.

“Tell me yours some other night.” He said it like a promise.

* * *

Nathaniel thankfully wasn’t as spaced out and sleep-deprived following this second meeting with Andrew, nor the next three times he met him behind the garage and wandered a little farther away from the only home he’d ever known. Andrew’s presence was a comfort, and just standing beside him breathing in the scent of smoke was worth the fear that whispered at the back of his mind each time he snuck back through the house in the early hours of the morning. This was the tiniest rebellion he could muster, and he clung to how alive it made him feel.

Andrew was quiet, often swimming too far down in the darkness of his own mind to react to the atrocities that appeared on Nathaniel’s skin as he had that first night. Nathaniel wondered what Andrew would say if he found out what he was capable of—he was the Butcher’s son after all, and even if he was a disappointment, he had a name to uphold and atrocities to commit. Nathaniel was too scared to find out how Andrew would react—if he would leave or stay or even respond at all, and Nathaniel didn’t know which was worse; sometimes he thought Andrew knew, and he thought the darkness he saw was perfect understanding rather than censure. Still, they never breached that particular topic during their talks, which in themselves were short enough to always leave Nathaniel wanting more.

Tonight, Nathaniel had sunk far enough into his own mind to get him through the torture laid out before him. Most of the wounds across the man’s skin weren’t from Nathaniel’s hand, but a good number were; he tried to view these from a distance, and thankfully this well-tested strategy was working tonight. He knew none of the slashes from his own blade were deep enough or well-placed enough to kill the man, but Lola was having the time of her life getting him to the brink of his life.

Nathaniel could feel them watching him—Romero’s eyes slipping from his sister to Nathaniel, Mary staring at him from across the room, Nathan’s glare boring into him to try to catch his flinch at Lola’s flaying. He hoped that his expression was blank enough that he was almost a mirror image of Andrew, but he wondered if his father’s circle wanted a cruel smile carved into his face; he’d caught himself making that expression before, and his resemblance to his father sent him heaving. Nathaniel barely looked in the mirror anymore. He didn’t want to know who he would see staring back.

“Nathaniel,” Nathan said, and Nathaniel was careful to not make eye contact as he turned towards his father. He’d been beaten for less before, and he focused instead on the light reflecting off his blade. Nathan’s voice was loud in the cellar, a booming sound that carried over the pleading of the man at the center of the room. “Give me a hand, would you?”

Nathaniel pocketed the knife in favor of the cleaver hanging from his hip. He’d sharpened all his blades before entering the cellar that night, and he was thankful for that foresight as he set about dismembering the man. It only took a few swings. The man screamed as Lola neatly stepped out of the way of his blood.

Nathaniel knelt down before his father with the hand resting in both of his, the blood dripping steadily to pool at their feet. He could feel the weight of Nathan’s appraisal. Nathan took the hand from him. Nathan didn’t give him any further instructions, so he let his hands drop but remained on one knee. It wasn’t enough to completely shield him from the murder, but Nathaniel supposed something was better than nothing.

He should have been expecting Nathan’s grip in his hair, tight enough to rip the strands out as he dragged Nathaniel to his feet; his father was taller than he was and Nathaniel hung there, scrabbling for purchase on the floor as his father yanked him to face him.

He held up the hand with the one that wasn’t breaking the skin of Nathaniel’s scalp, and he seethed his way through his criticism. “Next time, don’t try to make it easier on whoever I tell you to cut into. Do you understand me, Nathaniel?” he spit out his son’s name and waited for Nathaniel’s attempt at a nod before continuing. “If I tell you to do something you do it. I can make an example of you with my axe if you need help making someone suffer.”

“I don’t.”

Nathan dropped the hand and slammed his fist into Nathaniel’s face; Nathaniel felt blood welling up as he hit the ground, leaving Nathan with a handful of his hair in his fist. He dropped the hair and leveled one last sneer at Nathaniel before turning away. Nathaniel heard him bark Mary’s name, but it was easier to focus on the occasional drip of the faucet by his head than the pain. He didn’t even notice time pass. The next thing he knew he was flinching away from a hand in his hair, caressing his bloody scalp.

“You’re a fool, Nathaniel,” Mary said, and he saw himself reflected in her eyes. He hated himself for cowering away from her and hated himself for that inherent hatred at his own fear. While Nathaniel resembled his father in coloring, he had his mother’s build and a fear too strong to stand up for himself. Nathaniel was a fool for not noticing the rest of them leave or the tedious task of cleaning up the evidence. The man’s body was long gone, as was his blood and his severed hand, but Nathaniel was sure he could still see where he had knelt as the life was drained out of him.

Mary pressed a cool washcloth to his head and he jerked away from her, but her other hand was waiting. She gripped his hair softer than Nathan had, but not by much, as she cleaned away the dried blood. Nathaniel wished he saw sorrow in her eyes. It was just a trick of the light. The sight of her sent his brain singing the mantra he had drilled into his head at the trigger of her nicotine-stained skin. It took him too long to realize that it was Mary saying it, quietly; he understood her words but not her reasoning.

“When I tell you to go, run and don’t look back.”

She seemed to be waiting for affirmation from him, so he nodded despite his confusion. She cupped his face for a moment, staring at the disappointment of a son she’d carried, her sole duty as the wife of a monster. Mary sat back on her heels and stood up. She didn’t spare him a backwards glance as she walked up the stairs, and Nathaniel heard her footsteps for an eternity.

* * *

“What’s your name?”

Nathaniel turned his head to look at Andrew’s profile. Andrew was so unaffected by his own question that Nathaniel would have thought it his unfaithful imagination had he not known Andrew’s voice so well by now. They lay side by side on top of a rather suspicious muscle car that Andrew claimed he hadn’t stolen (“You’re the son of a maybe-gangster and you’re seriously opposed to grand theft auto?” he’d asked anyway, and the glint in his eye upon viewing Nathaniel’s scowl looked like humor), which Andrew had conveniently locked the keys inside of. It was nice regardless.

They were a few streets over from the Wesninski mansion and the distance bred fear in Nathaniel’s heart; how pathetic was he that he could barely stomach being within the place of his nightmares, let alone away from it? He hoped they were too far away for anyone to hear his truth.

Andrew flicked him on the nose, and Nathaniel flicked his eyes over to him in surprise. There was that slight humor again.

“Nathaniel Abram Wesninski.”

Andrew squinted at him. “No.”

“No?”

“That’s too much work. What about Neil?”

Nathaniel stared at him. “You can’t just rename people whenever—” he began haughtily; Andrew covered his mouth with a hand, waiting until Nathaniel finished his muffled speech before speaking.

“You don’t look like a Nathan or a Nathaniel. Neil, though? It could work.”

Nathaniel didn’t even know where to begin with Andrew. He flicked his tongue against the smoke-tinged hand at his mouth, and Andrew ripped his hand away.

“Are you a _child_?”

“Legally.”

Andrew’s lips curled, and Nathaniel huffed out a laugh at the dissonance between Andrew’s lips and eyes. His lips spoke in a snarl of silent murder—but a brand less terrifying than Nathaniel was accustomed to—but when Nathaniel made his way to Andrew’s eyes, they were sharp and fixated on something. Nathaniel almost turned around to see what Andrew was looking at until he realized it was him.

Andrew was looking at him.

It was still hard to get used to the moments when Andrew’s intensity outweighed his apathy, and Nathaniel didn’t understand why he was looking so intently at Nathaniel’s lips. He replayed the conversation in his head, and the only thing out of the ordinary was his laugh. Did he sound like his father when he laughed—cruel and powerful? His mother never laughed, and he wondered if he sounded like a young Mary Hatford, before she ever crossed the ocean and sold her soul to the Butcher.

Andrew sat up suddenly, half-turned away from Nathaniel. Nathaniel sat up as well and reached for Andrew; he didn’t make contact, as he knew of Andrew’s aversion to it, but he let his hand hover.

“Andrew?” he asked quietly. “What is it?”

“You’re a pipedream.”

Nathaniel frowned. “I’m not going anywhere. What is it?” he repeated.

Andrew blew out a breath, head tilted up and still refusing to look in Nathaniel’s direction. Nathaniel must have lost track of time again as he watched Andrew, because he blinked and opened his eyes to Andrew’s face only inches from his own. He was staring at Nathaniel’s lips again, head tilted inquisitively, and there was a hint of anger simmering beneath his gaze.

“Tell me no,” he said. Nathaniel licked his lips self-consciously, and Andrew’s eyes flicked up to meet his. “I want to kiss you. Tell me no.”

Nathaniel had never kissed anyone—never wanted to—but longing to kiss Andrew made sense of how conscious he was of Andrew’s lips at any given moment. Nathaniel wasn’t sure what Andrew saw in his features to warrant his desire, but Nathaniel blinked slowly and traced his lip with his tongue again; he didn’t miss how Andrew’s eyes followed its path this time, how Andrew’s breathing hitched. “I won’t.”

“But that’s not a yes.”

“ _Yes_ , Andrew.”

Andrew’s lips were on his. Andrew’s breath was shaky and warm across his lips. Andrew was kissing him slow and deep, until he wasn’t. It was as if he was testing the waters before diving head first in, because he pressed one of Nathaniel’s hands into the metal beneath them and his other slid feather-light around Nathaniel’s neck, avoiding Nathaniel’s raw scalp and making him shiver, and then he kissed like he was drowning.

Nathaniel knew what a fight for his life felt like, but it never felt like this—blooming and warm and tasting of strawberries and cigarettes. Andrew kissed like this was the beginning and ending of everything, their first kiss, their last kiss, the end of the fucking world and Nathaniel was by his side and before him and he never wanted to let go.

Eventually they had to part, because kissing like it was the damn apocalypse tore the breath from their lungs and they pulled just far enough away to pant into each other’s mouths.

“I hate you,” Andrew said with a huff, and Nathaniel was well-versed in truths and half-truths by now to know that wasn’t the whole story; he hummed in reply and curled his pinky against Andrew’s on the hood of the car. He chuckled quietly at Andrew’s glaring at their intertwined fingers, and Andrew’s eyes found his lips again. Something about Nathaniel’s laugh captivated Andrew in the way Andrew’s presence thrilled him. He shoved Nathaniel away, lightly and carefully despite his pretense of hatred.

Nathaniel slid off the car and waited for the sound of Andrew joining him on the ground before he rounded it. He slid twin needles out of his pocket and knelt at the door; it was only a heartbeat before there was a click, and he shifted out of the way as he tugged at the handle. He glanced up at Andrew through the tinted window as the interior of the car started dinging at the open door and saw Andrew’s lips parted.

Andrew reached out a hand. Nathaniel took it.

Andrew tugged him to his feet just to back him up against the car. Nathaniel breathed his affirmation again in case Andrew needed it, and Andrew kissed him into the cool metal until Nathaniel could barely remember his own name.

“Neil,” Andrew said, and that sounded about right, “I can’t believe we sat on the hood when you could’ve just done that an hour ago.”

The passing time didn’t worry him as much anymore as it should have. Neil smirked against Andrew’s lips. “I can’t tell you all my secrets right off the bat. I have to give you a reason to keep me around.”

Andrew rolled his eyes and kissed him again for minutes or decades, Nathaniel couldn’t be sure. Seconds were days, were years, were the distance between stars. He was pushed away again and Andrew was getting into the car. Neil pressed a thumb to his lip and Andrew revved the engine as he stared. Neil gave him a two-finger salute, and Andrew shifted gears.

Andrew sped past him and Neil laughed at the middle finger Andrew flung out the window at him. The car made it to the end of the street and turned away, going further into Baltimore proper. Neil had no idea where Andrew actually lived, or if he lived anywhere at all. Maybe no home was better than a bad one.

Andrew was right in his statement of how long they had been out there, and Neil eased his way around the garage, careful to avoid the motion sensors as he always did. It was strange how silent the house was. Neil hoped everyone was asleep but his hope came too soon as the light to his left flickered on. Lola’s sickly sweet voice sent a pang of dread through him, and he was glad Andrew wasn’t around to witness him turn to face the consequences of his actions.

“Well, don’t you look freshly _deflowered_ , Nathaniel."


End file.
